This piece was originally published in February 2011 in a magazine called Fractured West which sadly no longer exists. I recently read it again and wanted to share it with you all. For some reason, I am drawn to writing male characters in the first person! Hope you enjoy.

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After they told me that he had died, I went out in the rain. I had to be out of the hot recycled air of the university halls. The rain was heavy; it clung to my forehead and rolled down my neck. I reached my tongue up to my lip and tasted some. It had turned warm against my skin. I walked to the end of the road, my hands in my pockets, my feet shuffling through the puddles. Radiohead played loudly in my headphones.

At the garage I bought brown bread and sardines. I walked back the way I had come, wondering how many times my feet had walked up and down that same road. My trainers were wet through.

Back at the flat, Stu was playing on the PlayStation. There was no lounge, so the university tried to make up for it by putting a grotty sofa and television in the corner of the kitchen. I took out two slices of brown bread and watched them darken under the grill. As if by magic, I used to think, when I was younger. You couldn’t see the heat; it just made the bread change. I peeled back the lid on the tin of sardines and was surprised by its gracefulness. It looked like a metal rose. I mashed the sardines onto the uncooked side of the toast with a fork and returned it to the grill.

‘What the hell are you cooking?’ Stu asked, ‘It stinks.’

I ignored him and took the sardines and toast back to my room.

And there, in the muggy warmth of the halls, feeling like a stranger to everything around me, I ate sardines on toast like Grandpa did after Grandma died. He told me afterwards that he didn’t know what to do, so that’s what he did.

I imagined him in the supermarket, buying his tins and tins of sardines, and the cashier smiling at him, feeling sorry for him, imagining his loneliness. It was all he knew how to cook.

I remember him telling me these things, and then first feeling like a man, sitting across from him at his oak table, putting the world to rights as we ate.

Thanks for reading Miners,

Liz x

P.S. All my books have 25% off at the moment in my Etsy shop - go check it out!

Show me the books on sale! :)

Miners is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.